Comparative Law and its Founding Father

Comparative law is the study of theories on legal systems where the systems are compared to each other. Comparative law has been practiced for more than a century. Of recent times, the law has gained importance due to two reasons. One, increased world trade globalization has created the need to trade in legal systems that are unfamiliar. Two, there has been efforts made towards harmonizing laws. Most recently, there have been efforts made towards codification among the members of European Union, which have several legal systems.

Sujit Choudhry is the Professor of law at I. Michael Heyman and Berkeley Law’s Dean. He is recognized globally as the authority on the comparative law of constitution and comparative constitutional development. The research that Sujit has done gives answers to basic questions of methodology in the law of the constitution.

The professor has published more than ninety articles, book chapters, reports and working papers. His collections that are edited are Constitution Making, Migration of Constitution ideas, and Constitutional Design for Divided Societies. Sujit Choudry is a member of the Board of Editors of IJC-ICON, Executive Committee of ISPL-ICON.S, Editorial Advisory Board of Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law, and Editorial Board of CCR-South Africa.

Sujit is additionally the founding director of the Center for Constitutional Transitions. This is the first University in the World that generates and mobilizes knowledge and information in an effort to build the constitution. He has also consulted for the World Bank Institute and worked as an expert to support transitions in constitutions in foreign jurisdictions like Jordan, Nepal, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Sri Lanka. Check this on huffingtonpost.com.

Before being part of Berkeley Law, Sujit was Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. He was also Scholl Chair at Toronto University’s Faculty of Law. He has also received the Trudeau Fellowship in 2010. Sujit has been a clerk to Antonio Lamer a chief justice at Canada Supreme Court. He also holds degrees from Oxford, Toronto, and Havard.